QuoteReplyTopic: Time Magazine, How We Can Get Ready. Posted: January 21 2018 at 12:59am

In New York City just South of me they are actually having fewer cases than by this time last year so far, but this is increasing and may not have peaked. We have a lot of flu vaccine given here and I suspect this is why we are not like California or Texas. However our hospitalizations are up over last year with flu E.R. visits still climbing. Then last week hospitalizations for New York State flu as a whole broke all records! Below is a followup to my earlier post, but this time from Time Magazine. Note that the current administration is planning on still further eviscerating our preparedness. We got to fund those tax cuts for rich people, Yeaahh!

Everyone’s talking—and rightly so—about this year’s flu season, which is on its way to becoming the worst in 15 years. The news is full of stories about hospitals resorting to tents to accommodate the influx of patients and parents dealing with school closings in nearly every state. We count and mourn the dead.
As a family doctor, my heart is with those patients and their families.
As a global health professional with four decades of experience in combating epidemics,
my mind is on the one critical thing we aren’t talking about at all as
we suffer in this flu season: complacency. Put plainly, our collective
flu complacency is what is killing us.

Our usual response to annual flu is not enough to
combat the risks we face this week, let alone prepare us for the even
deadlier pandemic flu most experts agree we’ll face in the future. Yes,
we have an annual vaccine, and everyone eligible should get one without
question. The reality, however, is that we remain stuck at immunization
rates under 50%. And the flu vaccine we have is only 60% effective in
the best years and 10% effective in the worst years. The current flu
vaccine is better than nothing. We urgently need a much, much more
effective flu vaccine.

TIME Health Newsletter

Yes, we know to close schools
and places where the public gathers at close quarters indoors, like
movie theaters. But we don’t always move soon enough or in a timely
manner. Yes, we know that we should wash our hands, cover coughs and
sneezes and stay home when sick. But we don’t always.

People suffer and die needlessly. In the worst years, in the U.S. alone, seasonal flu causes
up to 36 million infections, three-quarters of a million
hospitalizations and 56,000 deaths. We are not taking the time and
investing the resources needed to protect ourselves, our loved ones and
our communities.

Why not? Complacency.

This is not a new human phenomenon. I’m talking about
the cycle of panic-neglect-panic-neglect that we have seen with
epidemic response over the decades. This cycle is common to human lives
in ways small and large. We do it with our houses, cars and even
healthcare. But short memories are our downfall. They may even be our
death when it comes to diseases like the flu, unless we act. We haven’t
been hit by a truly devastating pandemic in a long time. So as
individuals, we let down our guard as our leaders quietly defund and
de-staff the services we need to protect us.

I truly believe the risk to humanity of continued
foot-dragging is huge. Scientists and health officials know what’s
needed and what we should be doing. But we’re simply not moving fast
enough with the right leadership and enough resources.

Let there be no mistake: in a severe pandemic,
the U.S. healthcare system could be overwhelmed in just weeks.
Hospitals and clinics would be forced to turn away millions of patients.
Critical medications and care would not reach people in time. Millions
of people in every state would be felled by the virus, and hundreds of
thousands—including newborn babies, toddlers and older adults—would die
in the weeks and months following the initial outbreak. The GDP in the
United States would plummet as much as $2 billion, if not more.

Inadequate preparedness programs—and the investments
required to fund and sustain them—mean that even with some of the best
available healthcare there is, the United States remains woefully
susceptible to a major future flu epidemic that might make this year’s
widespread lethal outbreak look mild in comparison. Over the last
decade, the federal government has cut upwards of 50% of its funding for
the U.S. Public Health Emergency Preparedness program that it created
in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack to protect against bioterror,
pandemics and other public health emergencies. This has cost state and
local health departments some 45,000 jobs. And the Trump administration
is now calling for even more draconian budget cuts.

The cost of preventing epidemics is a roughly a tenth
of what it costs to cope with them when they hit. Over a decade ago,
renowned professor Dr. Michael Osterholm from the University of
Minnesota issued a clarion call for a billion-dollar-per-year U.S.
commitment to development of a universal flu vaccine. But his call has
been neither heard nor heeded. Annual funding to find a universal
vaccine has never approached even $100 million a year, even as the
seasonal flu has cost the U.S. economy an estimated $87 billion a year.

Why do we as a nation continue to leave ourselves
vulnerable? The shockingly simple answer lies in our collective
complacency. As soon as headlines about the flu are gone, hospitals are
emptied of flu patients, schools are back in session and workplace
absenteeism declines, we go back to business as usual. Pandemic
preparedness plans are put back on the shelf. Funding for public health
preparedness and flu R&D disappears into a haze of competing
demands.

To shake this collective complacency—and make our
country and the world as safe as possible from these serious and all too
real public health threats—each of us must recognize pandemic
prevention and preparedness as matters of both personal and political
urgency.

What can you do?

At the personal level, you can learn the essentials of reducing flu transmission in your family
and local community. You can make sure the leadership at your local
health department, your children’s school, your town or city, your
college or university, your workplace, your community center or your place of worship
have all established a clear and sensible pandemic flu preparedness
plan and are holding annual epidemic readiness drills. And you can make
sure that everyone in your family receives the annual flu shot. Today,
less than a quarter of young Americans take the annual flu shot, and 20%
believe the long-disproven myth that vaccines can cause autism.

Leading scientists and public health officials have
the capability to keep us much safer from devastating influenza
pandemics. They need your prompt and decisive support to succeed. Your
action today may be a matter of life and death for you and your loved
ones.

John, I'm afraid I am in the group that doesn't trust the flu vaccine. Too much info out there that's negative about it. I have gotten it about 3 times in my life but have put a full stop to getting it after seeing all the negative literature on vaccines in general but specifically about the flu vaccines. It also seems that the majority of those getting the flu this year appear to be those who got the vaccine.

I agree that we're not prepared in that people don't take it seriously. When a pandemic was almost issued for the swine flu about 5 or 6 years ago, I could not believe the apathy of not only the public but also the hospital staff. No one seemed to know or care about what was going on.

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